R for Reading – Our Favourite First Reads

I love reading. I will read anything that’s around me. Books, Blogs, Startup stories, fiction, biographies, you get the drift. Anything except newspapers because those depress me. For me, reading is the ultimate stress buster and I am so happy that I finally gave up being an idiot about hard copy books and invested in a Kindle. It’s literally my best friend that comes with me everywhere.

To me, books represent an alternate world that we can be a part of whenever we like.

Even before M was born, I was set on introducing him to the lovely world of reading. My mom started reading to me when I was six months old and a couple of months ago, I did just that. M is not much into stories before bedtime so we read a couple of books through the day and his favourite thing to do is reading while he soaks in his bath-tub (As you can see I am raising quite the sophisticated child).

However, one of the sad side-effects of owning a kindle is that you stop visiting book stores and losing yourself amongst all the shelves. I miss running my hand through the book covers – a habit I cultivated as a child when mom took me to book stores every weekend and I could read to my heart’s content there and then choose a single book to take home. Luckily, thanks to M, I now have a legitimate excuse to go book shopping once again.

In just six months of book shopping, M already has a shelf heaving with books that I read to him. But, like I used to be partial to my Enid Blyton’s as a kid I am partial to some of his books too.

Here is a list of my top five books that I feel every mom should buy!

1. Lost My Name

Facebook has some crazy kind of targeting and found out I was pregnant even before I had told anyone. Almost immediately I was bombarded with ads from a company called Lost My Name. They do the most fabulous personalized story books about a child who loses his/her name and tries to find it through various adventures. Even though the book is more suited towards an older child, I ordered it the day after we named our son as it makes for a great momento. I love reading the various chapters to M – we find one letter in his name every day of the week – and this was his first book ever.

2. Bath Book

This is M’s current favourite book. It’s completely water proof and he learnt how to hold a book and turn pages using this one. As you can also see from the picture above, he currently eats it more than reading it. Our bath book has pictures of sea horses and fish and each one is named after one member of the family. We read it everyday while M soaks in the tub and now that he’s a bit older he has started to raise his hands for the book as soon as he is in the tub.

3. The Hungry Caterpillar

This is ofcourse a very popular book and we got gifted it by a close friend of mine when M started solids. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about a hungry caterpillar who eats a lots of food through the week and then binges on a whole lot of junk food on the weekend (maybe the character is based around me!). He then gets sick and learns that junk food is bad for him before turning into a butterfly. Great story aside, the book is filled with high contrast images and lovely pictures of food to keep kids of different ages interested. If you’d like to know more, my friend Mommying Baby T has done a lovely post on how versatile this book really is.

4. One More Tickle Puppet Book

I came across this book when my mom gifted it to my nephew. Even though I didn’t have a child then I have immediate childrens’ book envy and vowed to get one for my baby too. This is a great board book once your baby has discovered their laugh and their ticklish spots. Basically it is about a big hare who tickles all the little hare’s body parts. The hand puppet in the center of the books allows you to tickle your baby as you read it to them, making it a great book for bedtime laughs.

5. Kiwi A to Z

Even though M was born in India, he has a Kiwi passport like his mum. Given I spent so much of my life in New Zealand, I wanted to introduce him to all things Kiwi. Which is why, I didn’t stop after buying an All Blacks bib and the famous wooden Buzzy Bee and went ahead to buy a Kiwi A to Z book. Again, this is a bit complex for M to enjoy just yet but he loves looking at all the pictures and hearing his mum say B for Bach and G for Gumboot rather than the usual banana, goat etc. There are a ton of different varieties of this book and if you have a fellow friend from New Zealand who is pregnant, I highly recommend this book as a baby shower or birthday gift! I am sure that like there is a Kiwi book, there would be one for India or the country you live in too and its a great way to introduce the local culture to bub.

What were the first books you bought for your child? Do share them with me as I’d love to expand my (ehm, I mean M’s) book collection!